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EA Labels president: DRM Is A Failed Dead-End Strategy

EA Labels president Frank Gibeau stated that Sim City’s persistent internet connection requirement was never meant as a form of DRM, simply because DRM is a “failed dead-end strategy.”

“I was involved in all the meetings,” he affirmed. “DRM was never even brought up once. You don't build an MMO because you're thinking of DRM - you're building a massively multiplayer experience, that's what you're building.”

"At no point in time did anybody say 'you must make this online'. It was the creative people on the team that thought it was best to create a multiplayer collaborative experience"

"DRM is a failed dead-end strategy,” asserted Gibeau. “It's not a viable strategy for the gaming business. So what we tried to do creatively is build an online service in the SimCity universe and that's what we sought to achieve. For the folks who have conspiracy theories about evil suits at EA forcing DRM down the throats of Maxis, that's not the case at all."

Gibeau acknowledged that EA failed in communicating the MMO nature to gamers before launch, but he noted that Sim City sold over 1.1 million copies in its first two weeks, making it “the fastest-selling and biggest SimCity we've ever built.”

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"DRM is a failed dead-end strategy” That's why they enforce the installation of origin for retail games as well. If his claim was ever true, origin would be optional on retail and they wouldn't hurt the honest customer with such crap. His words and EA's actions with most new games contradict each other. DRM shouldn't be there whatever form it has whether it's origin, steam, activations, it gets cracked at day 1 anyways.

Gone are the Sim Cities of old where you could make a sprawling metropolis and build as much as you want, without having to rely on someone you play with especially if you don't know them, they might **** you over in game somehow. The game wouldn't be so bad if they kept the large scale from previous sim cities and made it an non persistent multiplayer game. As first poster said, no matter how you make it sound drm is drm, and sim city being always online is no less drm then any blizzard game set up the same way.

Since when can Sim City be classed as an MMO? Why would you need to play such a boring game with other people all the time? Try to disguise it all you like *******, DRM is DRM no matter how you slice it, or what kind of make up you try to put on it & yeah, you're right about one thing, it's a failed strategy & the world told all you ******** that to begin with. So you went ahead with it anyway & now everyone hates you even more. GFY you greedy ******* liar.